


Old Yeller Lived Here

by ZaliaChimera



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Artificial Intelligence, Dark, Gen, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Imprisonment, M/M, Mental Instability, Mental Torture, Muzzles, Non-Graphic Violence, Restraints, RvB Angst War, Solitary Confinement, Torture, non graphic torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 05:36:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11155341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZaliaChimera/pseuds/ZaliaChimera
Summary: “Rise and shine.”He squints into the light at the figure shadowed in the door of his cell. Cell, he thinks, is probably a bit generous. It’s more of a box where he can be restrained while they move him between assignments. A cage.He knows how this works. They let him out when they need him, and pray that they can put him back inside.





	Old Yeller Lived Here

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the RvB angst war from a prompt of
> 
> 'the AU where Wash is still adopted by the Reds & Blues, but they're mercenaries who work for Hargrove ;)'
> 
> There is some implied Tucker/Alpha, however it is very mild.

“Rise and shine.”

He squints into the light at the figure shadowed in the door of his cell. Cell, he thinks, is probably a bit generous. It’s more of a box where he can be restrained while they move him between assignments. A cage.

The figure steps in, just enough room for them both. He sees teal now that the light has stopped burning his retinas. Teal armour. The AI in his head shifts, sparking with something like recognition. Maybe it’s the colour, maybe it’s the way Teal moves. He hums softly, trying to pacify the AI, stretching out his thoughts from where they’re fused together, a mess of melted wires and melted thoughts.

A hand slides into his hair, dragging his head up, and he knows, even with the visor in the way, that the soldier in teal is scrutinising him, taking in the restraints and the muzzle and the dark bruises around his eyes. He scrutinises back, watching how Teal shifts, feeling the pull of gauntlets in his hair which has been left to grow out shaggy and unkempt.

“Fucking hell, what’s with this guy? He looks like goddam Hannibal Lecter.” Teal glances back over his shoulder at someone in nondescript black armour. Teal is obviously the leader, talking like he expects answers. Black armour is… is…

[Lackey] the AI whispers when he can’t remember the word. He doesn’t have to use them much so they slip away sometimes. The Ai is much more interested in Teal right now, a bubbling curiosity and familiarity that drags him in too.

“He’s crazy,” Lackey says.

That sparks coarse anger in him. He snarls behind the muzzle. There’s dark laughter in his head.

“He didn’t like that,” Teal says, sounding intrigued.

“I told you!” Lackey replies. “He killed three of the guys the boss sent after him last time he was let out.”

“And the muzzle? What did he do? Rip someone’s face off?”

He had actually. Or part of it. They’d cuffed his hands and gone for the back of his neck and he hates that, hates being touched there, hated it even before they burned metal into his skin.

Teal’s thumb brushes against the front of the muzzle, his fingers sliding up against his jawline. It’s the closest that he’s come to non-violent physical contact in… in a long time and he turns towards it instinctively.

“See,” Teal says with delight, “he’s a puppy.”

“He’s a brute,” Lackey snaps. “A very dangerous one.”

“We’re mercenaries,” Teal replies. “We’re supposed to be dangerous brutes. What else did the boss send for us?”

Lackey grumbles something that he can’t hear, but mainly he’s distracted by the hand still against his face. It’s both of them reaching for that contact he realises, him and the AI, the AI flushing BLUE BLUE and beneath that _HOME_ and he doesn’t know what to do with that feeling except that he wants it violently.

Lackey holds out a case and a slim black thing that looks like a wristwatch. “Sedatives,” Lackey says, and flinches when he snarls again. “If it was me, I’d keep him under except when he’s needed. There’s feeding tubes in there for that.”

“Good thing I’m not you,” Teal says. Is he imagining the distaste? “What’s that?” Teal asks then, looking at the watch thing.

“Insurance,” Lackey says. He sounds as though he’s smirking. He presses something on the watch.

Fire fills his brain and he’s screaming and the AI is screaming and they cling to each other like they have done before, too tangled and warped together to do anything else and the fire spreads and spreads like all of the wires in his brain are burning and shorting out with neural overload it all tumbles down walls broken open recursive fragmentation shards of memory of red and blue of grey grey grey armour and grey floor and grey bases and white armour and the gold dome of a visor looming above them and- and-

The pain is gone and he slumps back, though ghosts of it linger at the edges of his thoughts. The ghosts always linger. He thinks he might be more ghost than person now. He tastes blood, a split lip, and there’s no way to spit with the gag part of the muzzle wedged between his teeth so it dribbles down his chin.

“The fuck was that?” Teal asks. He has the watch thing in his hands like he might use it, but his voice is tight and the AI whines a high noise that’s begging and disbelief and trust that overwhelms.

“Insurance, I told you,” Lackey says. “He’s got all those wires and crap in his brain. The neural shock keeps him in line.

He hates Lackey, he realises with a jolt, and the AI agrees. He looks warily at the watch in Teal’s hands and wondered if he should hate him too in preparation for the inevitable. The AI hesitates, but still shaken, a glitching figure in light blue, it can’t articulate why. There’s a flash, just a flash, of an image of Teal on the ground, half dead and in pain and… no… he doesn’t like that. Or the AI doesn’t like that and that might as well be the same thing these days.

There’s a click very close by, and when he looks, his arm is free of the restraints, and Teal’s hand is resting lightly against his wrist. The AI swells with something… affection? He thinks it’s affection, but it’s so foreign that he has trouble recognising it.

“Wh- what are you doing?” Lackey asks and the fear makes his adrenaline spike.

“I can’t test a weapon if it’s locked up,” Teal says darkly. 

The other hand is freed. He flexes it, watching the curl of his own fingers.

“Do you have a death wish? He’ll fucking murder us all!”

“See, I don’t think he will,” Teal says. 

The leg restraints unfasten and all that’s let then is the chain, the one fastened to the muzzle at the back of his head. He feels the weight of Teal’s hand against it, anticipation thrumming in his veins, the AI a comforting buzz in his head, sharpening his senses down to a fine point. He likes that clarity, the times when everything is focussed and clear and he’s not a machine, and not a man, but a perfect fusion of both.

“The way I see it,” Teal continues, “there’s only one of us here who’s been sticking him with needles and shoving tubes down his throat and administering ‘neural shocks’.” 

The hand not on the chain runs lightly through his hair, a far more pleasant spark of sensation.

“What are you-“

“You get 30 seconds head-start. Thanks for the delivery.”

“But-“

“Start running.”

Lackey hesitates, and then bolts when Teal starts counting.

Teal keeps up the steady countdown, hand resting at the back of his neck over the chain until finally, finally, he hears the click and then the low command of “Sic him.”

—————

“See, I told him you were a puppy.” 

Teal finds him later amongst the wreckage of blood and bone and scattered bits of black armour and kevlar undersuit. The blood has dried into gloves along his arms, as red as the haze over his vision when he’d been let out, a rabid dog on the hunt.

He faces Teal and [His name, I think i know his name] the AI whispers, and he watches, waiting for more men, with weapons and restraints to slip out of the trees like they always have done. He’s expecting the sting of a tranquilliser dart or the burning pain through his skull.

Instead Teal reaches up and pops the seals of his helmet and pulls it off. He has dark skin and dreadlocks tied back at his nape and brown eyes. And most of all, he’s grinning like he’s just been given the best present in the world. 

“Pretty impressive,” Teal says, looking around in approval. “Think you’ll fit right in with us.”

He tilts his head, regarding Teal, while the AI searches frantically for the name, something panicked and desperate about it. He reaches back to touch the back of his neck, running fingers gently there, a soothing gesture. 

“The Reds and Blues, I mean,” Teal says, seeming to understand the unspoken question. “We’re mercenaries. Well, Charon’s private army, I guess. The boss sent you to us for a job.”

He huffs his disapproval. He knows that it’s for a job. He only gets brought out when they need him for a job or when the Chairman wants to show him off. But this is different. Normally he’d be back in the box by now, muzzled and chained until the next time.

The huff just makes Teal grin more widely and give a soft laugh. “Yeah. You’ll fit in. My name is-“

[Tucker!] the AI chimes in a split second before- 

“Tucker,” Teal says.

The AI floods him with recognition. Blue armour in a canyon. And friends, they’d been friends and he remembers stolen kisses in the dark around the back of the base and- and-

It’s gone before he can keep hold of it or find more but he remembers, or the AI remembers, and they’re the same thing so it doesn’t matter, and the AI is thrilling in his mind like he hasn’t felt it since… since…

He shies away from that memory, focuses on Teal again, on Tucker.

“So what do you say? You gonna join us?”

He isn’t used to being asked for his opinion anymore. They stopped asking him questions long ago when he’d smashed the psychologist’s face in and that was when they’d started putting him in the box.   
But the thing is… the thing is, he knows he’s a rabid dog. He knows he’s broken in so many ways that the only thing holding him together is the AI, and the only thing holding the AI together is him and the thing about being a dog is every dog needs to belong to someone. It’s better than being caged again.

Besides, the AI’s longing is intoxicating.

He nods.

Tucker beams at him. “Welcome to the team then. What should I call you?”

He shrugs. They don’t call him anything. Crazy, they call him crazy but he doesn’t like that. The monster is another one. The weapon is the nicest.

Tucker looks thoughtful for a moment. “I read some stuff about you, y’know,” he says. “So I’m gonna call you Wash, okay? Trust me, it’s better than what Caboose would come up with.”

Wash. He frowns, thinking it over. It slots into one of the broken places in his head. He nods slowly and in his head, the AI makes a noise of triumph.

[Church,] it- _he_ says and settles warm and content in Wash’s mind.

Tucker holds out a hand towards him. “C’mon then. We’ll get back to camp.”

Wash reaches out, still wary that this is a trap. 

“Why?” he asks, just before he takes Tucker’s hand, and gestures to the scattered armour and crumpled figure.

Tucker’s expression hardens. There’s fire in his eyes. “Because I won’t let anyone hurt my people ever again.”


End file.
